1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of information systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to on-line chatting.
2. Background Information
Advances in computer technology have led to personalization of computers. Once reserved for large enterprises, computers have become affordable and available to the masses. Coupled that with advances in networking and telecommunication technologies, increasingly computers are being networked together. Companies are racing to put their businesses on public data networks, such as the Internet. Other non-profit and government entities are doing the same. Information has become readily available with a few mouse clicks. As a result, increasingly users go on-line to get their news, do their shopping, meet their friends or simply other users on-line.
Currently, under the prior art, a user can go to a pre-established on-line chat room (hereinafter, simply chat room), and chat with other users (acquainted or not). The chat rooms are typically organized by subject matters, such as movies, TV shows, health, family, social and political issues. These subject matter oriented chat rooms are hosted by an interest group, such as the video game players interest group, the romance book readers interest group, and so forth, or hosted by one of the portals, such as Yahoo and MSNBC. In addition to the pre-establishment and subject matter organization characteristics, prior art chat rooms also typically share a number of other common characteristics, the requirements of pre-registration and log-in, and scheduled chat times.
While prior art on-line chatting have provided users with a new venue for communicating and interacting with other users, the above discussed and other characteristics are confining. In the real world, people strike up conversation and chat with each other as they shop at their favorite department or xe2x80x9cspecialtyxe2x80x9d stores (video stores, music stores and so forth), or frequent their favorite establishments (coffee shops, restaurants, bars, art galleries, and so forth). While each store or establishment tends to draw patrons of particular demographics or interests, nevertheless, in each of these situations, people talk or chat about whatever topics that interest them at the moment. There is no need to pre-register to get a user-ID, set up a password, fill out a profile, log into a chat room at a scheduled time, and out of courtesy, fundamentally constrain one""s conversation to expressions substantially related to the theme of the particular chat room.
Thus, a need exists to provide on-line users with enhanced chatting experience that is more closely related to their real world experience.
Visitation by a first on-line user to an information page of an information site is facilitated. Dynamic formation of a chat session for the first on-line user and a second on-liner user to chat with each other is also facilitated. The chat session, through which the first and second on-line users chat with each other, is then facilitated. In one embodiment, the chat session including its dynamic formation are facilitated by the information site. In another embodiment, the chat session including its dynamic formation are facilitated by a third party chat server. In one embodiment, the second on-line user is also visiting the same information page. In another embodiment, the second on-line user is merely visiting the same information site. In yet another embodiment, the second on-line user is visiting another information site. In one embodiment, visit by the first on-line user to a new information page of another information site, during the chat session, is also facilitated. In another embodiment, coordinated visit by the second on-line user to the same new information page of the other information site, during the chat session, is also facilitated.